Defense company turns from rockets to real
estate

CALIFORNIA

Aerospace
and defense company GenCorp has big plans for a former
rocket-testing site east of Sacramento: Turn part of it into a
subdivision. The company wants to build offices, stores, and 3,800
houses and apartments in the 1,400-acre Easton development.

The new development will cover more than a tenth of a
13,000-acre site where GenCorp subsidiary Aerojet tested rocket
engines and also dumped wastes left over from producing engines and
manufacturing pharmaceuticals. Much of that acreage is now a
Superfund site. The new development will be on relatively clean
ground, but a toxic brew of industrial chemicals, including
perchlorate, still lurks below in the groundwater (HCN, 4/28/03:
Perchlorate: It’s not just for rocket fuel anymore).

Taxpayers and Aerojet have already spent $185 million to
clean up pollutants seeping toward nearby neighborhoods — a
job that won’t be finished for 240 years, according to
Environmental Protection Agency estimates. The contamination also
forced the closing of more than a dozen municipal wells, so Aerojet
must replace that lost water by treating polluted groundwater and
transferring it to Sacramento County.

The Easton project
"is driven by smart-growth principles," says GenCorp spokeswoman
Linda Cutler: It’s near a proposed light-rail line and a
major highway, and includes a mix of housing, retail and open
space. But environmentalists believe many other locations would be
better suited for development. Vicki Lee of the Sierra Club’s
Motherlode chapter says, "Everybody jumps on the smart-growth
bandwagon to sugarcoat inappropriate projects."